My grandma came to live with my parents before I was born, and her bedroom was right next to mine. When I was really little and woke up at the crack of dawn on the weekends, I used to sneak into her room and we’d lay in her bed making shadow puppets on the walls or watching cartoons on her black-and-white TV until my parents woke up.
Her room was always neatly organized and well-accessorized, including her dresser and bureau. When she passed away at the ripe old age of 100, it took a while for my mom to do something with Grandma’s room. Eventually it became a guest room and Mom gave me the bureau to use in my old apartment. Now that the bureau is in our new guest room, I decided to give it a little makeover – but it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.
Like every other piece of my grandma’s furniture (including our dining set), the bureau is solid maple. The color of the wood doesn’t look great with our chocolate-brown walls, but I’m more likely to repaint the walls than I am to paint the dresser. The hardware is, naturally, very outdated and I decided to make that the focus of the makeover.
The top drawer’s pulls have two screws in the back spaced 2″ apart. As it happens, it’s damn near impossible to find 2″ pulls. I scoured the internet and couldn’t find anything that wasn’t the exact same pull (they were pretty popular I guess). So I attempted to spray paint them instead of replacing them.
As you can see in the first photo of the bureau, painting the pull didn’t work very well. It was essentially like putting lipstick on a pig.
Next, I searched for knob backplates to cover the two holes. Drilling a new hole between the existing ones allowed a standard knob to be installed. Again, I had a hard time finding exactly what I was looking for, and settled for these from homedepot.com (not available in stores):
Liberty knob backplate from homedepot.com
Fortunately I didn’t have the same problem with the rest of the drawers, which use a standard 3″ pull. I purchased six from Home Depot, but when I went to install them I found that the holes were a bit larger than the screws for the new pulls. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so it annoys me that the holes can be seen a little bit, and am not thrilled with the way the backplates look. Overall though, it’s an improvement from the old hardware. The satin nickel matches the mirror and frames in the room and brightens up the bureau.
I wonder what Grandma would think of the makeover?
we are facing the same problem with the hardware on our cabinets in our outdated kitchen. the gold knob backplates have a middle screw and then are nailed in on both ends so I am trying to figure out how to fill/cover the nail holes. I really don’t want to put on another backplate. It’s a little issue but not one with a good solution. Even our carpenter couldn’t come up with an easy fix.
I think it looks great, and I’m glad you left the wood “as is”. Since it’s such a special piece to you, I agree with your reasoning about the darker brown walls and the likelihood of those being repainted at some point down the road (and besides, the wood on the dresser looks like it is in such great shape).
It is so nice that you have special pieces that remind you of your grandmother around your home. I wish I had something like that from one of my grandmothers.
Looks very nice,I think Grandma would be happy that you were using something of hers and that it means so much to you. The silver gives it a nice upgrade and makes the piece look current- great job!
That is a great, easy facelift!
And you’re right – that dresser is like a big sister to the desk I’m re-doing!